We find nowhere that the Greeks,--the inhabitants of the ancient continent generally,--the Arabs, or even the ancient Egyptians themselves, have ever been accustomed to this position, which necessarily implies some anatomical modification, whether it be in the separation of the pelvis, the direction of the neck of the thigh-bone, or the torsion of the bones, etc.[150] This position seems, on the contrary, to have been always the peculiarity of the Melanesian races; it is the ordinary mode of _standing_ among the inhabitants in the upper course of the Nile, and the Negroes of Africa and the Oceanic Islands. They place themselves thus in order to look at anything, to chat together, or to deliberate. The magnificent drawings which illustrate the account of the travels of the English Embassy to the Emperor of Abyssinia,[151] represent this monarch as reviewing an entire army of infantry drawn up in order of battle, and all squatting in this manner. The ancient Egyptians generally kept themselves either on their knees or seated on the ground, the legs brought together, and the knees touching in front of the chest, as thousands of statues, figures, and pictures show us. But their artists have just revealed to us that the people of Central Africa have always been as they are at the present day. The great painting of Beït-Oually, in Nubia,[152] represents Rameses the Great as charging a troop of Negroes from Soudan; on one side, farther off, we see a Negro near a saucepan, preparing, doubtless, some food; he is squatting in the manner of which we have just spoken. In this place, as is often the case, the Egyptian artist has been clever in seizing a profile by its most significant characteristic.[153] Géricault wished at one time to make a drawing of an episode in the “Shipwreck of the Medusa,” Coréard making signs to an African chief who was seated on the sand; he placed in his composition a Negro squatting, but he drew him with one foot resting entirely on the ground, and the other bearing only on the extremity of the metatarsi. At that time Géricault had only a white man as a model; a Negro would have placed himself differently, with both his feet flat on the ground. We might pursue the history of these physiological varieties _ad infinitum_,--it is a large field for the enquirer; and to mention one fact alone, the compared history of development among the different races of mankind has still to be accomplished, especially the history of the intra-uterine development of the Negro, and even partly the history of the first months of his aërial life.